


Swell

by MaldaineD



Series: Sedulous:  A Nivanfield Story [1]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22112818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaldaineD/pseuds/MaldaineD
Summary: Trauma and rehabilitation look different for everyone.  When Piers Nivans is given the opportunity to complete a 'program' to reintegrate into society after injecting himself with the C-Virus, Chris Redfield strikes a deal that if he could prove Piers was able, he'd be free to live the life that he wanted.  That starts in a not-so-controlled environment.
Relationships: Piers Nivans & Chris Redfield, Piers Nivans/Chris Redfield
Series: Sedulous:  A Nivanfield Story [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1621783
Comments: 6
Kudos: 65





	Swell

**Author's Note:**

> This is a revised version of the first fan fiction I ever wrote. I published it on tumblr eight years ago. That one was split into five parts, but I feel like this one is much closer to what I wanted the story to look like, and sadly that comes from having experienced a bit more trauma myself. It was difficult, joyous, upsetting, and I hope you enjoy it. I'm not sure how many Nivanfield fans are active out there, but I have to admit, it was great to use that tag again for the first time in a long while.

And between the waves, the man crawled from the sea. Broken, bloody, unsure. The sun hid nothing from him, cruelty reposed, and he fell prostrate against the grain of the sand, boots filled with weeds and infinitesimal things. Reap and sow; swell and crash.

~~~

The room was spotless, a sort of milky white, the kind that just showed how disinfected it was; an unnatural clean. The man, Piers Nivans, sat at the far right corner of the room. His face was downtrodden, glanced to the side and expectant. He didn’t know what time it was, but he knew it was time for the door to open. After months, seconds upon seconds, he had timed every rumble of his stomach, and he knew every step beyond the breach. Someone was coming. They always came at this time. It was what they did. He didn't need a time of day to know.

His head tilted, Piers stared at the door. It didn’t open like it always did. No one to prod, to draw blood, to question or fear him. Something about that made him nervous.

He laughed slightly. The feeling, the head turned away, counting down, he realized all this was anxiety itself, but it not coming, those horrible things, somehow it was worse. Something not working out as one surmised tended to leave a sour taste. Piers kept staring at the door because he had nowhere else to place his fear. His breath low, he started to tap his fingernails on the table next to him. He paced the meter of the tapping, but he always found himself speeding up. Piers needed something to concentrate on, and he was a little annoyed this was the best he could do.

A creak at the door.

Piers returned to his subtle state, hands between legs, head turned slightly to the side. A part of him never wanted to know what they looked like. Some of them wore masked, those probably just as afraid of him as he was of himself, but others walked in and breathed as though it were natural, that they couldn’t smell the stink he could: of rotten fish, of the ocean floor, of the flesh long picked clean, of his arm.

The latch turned, the door pressed slowly until it opened. A man in a well-tailored suit stood next to another man in an equally well-tailored suit.

“You’re sure it’s safe?” The man on the right said to someone behind him.

After a moment, some sound of affirmation, the two men entered the room. Piers did very little to keep himself from them. There was nowhere to go in the perfectly white room.

One man placed a packet of papers in front of him. A fountain pen followed from the other man. The two explained to him that after he finished reading the packet, if he agreed to the terms, they would provide him with next steps. When they asked if he understood, Piers nodded once.

The two men left the room.

Much of it didn’t make sense, the kind of technical garble derived to confuse. There were terms of release, contingent that he completed some sort of program, but the nature of it was barely mentioned. There was nothing to tell him where he was, where he could go, if he was even still alive. It just said he could leave, but that was a reward for something else, for the ‘program.’

The last page had a note, scraggly handwriting like chicken scratch. It said ‘please sign.’

The handwriting was familiar. 

~~~

He’d been given a calendar during the program. Eight months of the year were taken from him before he was put in the back of a black sedan and driven up the coast to Maine. He learned that he’d been held in the white room for nine months prior to him signing the contract. Seventeen months in a facility with the only hope of seeing the sun signed away in a contract he only half understood. It was early December now, the new year imminent.

Two men sat on either side of him, a black partition between them and the driver. A small bag was packed for him and put in the trunk of the car. Another attache case, a ‘special’ one, was packed along side of it. A stipulation of freedom. Snow powdered the ground to the left and right, and the heater in the car blasted.

Piers could feel the sweat pooling in his underarms. His lower back sore from having to hold the same position for hours, and as he tried to micro-adjust, the car came to a stop. As far as Piers could see, they stopped on the side of the road. One of the men gave him a nod and a smile. Piers felt no comfort in it, especially when both of the men got out of the car and shut the doors. They wander off somewhere out front, and Piers couldn’t see where they went.

Surely they didn’t put him through seventeen months of tests and trainings just to kill him out in the middle of the woods.

One of the men came back and opened the door. He stepped out of the way and gestured for Piers to get out of the car. The other man opened the trunk and removed Piers’s luggage. There was a truck about ten yards up the road, and when the luggage was placed next to him, the men got in their car, shut the door, and they turned to go back where they came from. Piers looked around the eerily tranquil setting, his breathe extending far into the cold. This was the first time he’d been outside in a year and a half.

The door of the truck opened, and he got out of the car, the man Piers died for, the one that wrote the chicken scratch on the contract. He waved, but Piers didn’t move. He looked around him again; confusion, impossibility.

“Come on, you’ll catch a cold!” Chris Redfield shouted as he started to make his way down the road to where Piers was standing.

Piers couldn’t move. There was no way. He just watched as Chris got closer to him, something about it, maybe the snow, or the way he’d just been left, it didn’t feel real. It was sterile, sterile like the milky room. This wasn’t real.

“Piers,” Chris said, in front of him, “I know it’s a lot to take in, but I can explain on the way. I figured it would be better than having them escort you to the car.”

Wide eyed, Piers’s took stock in the moment. He was there, physical, in front of him, though Piers didn't dare touch him. Right there, that was Chris Redfield. His jacket was covered in snowflakes, his shoulders wide like he remembered, and his nose a little rosy from the cold. There was still so much distrust. They’d been tricked by evil before, by people that hid their identities with….

“It’s me,” Chris said. “I promise.”

As Piers nodded, he could feel a rise in confidence, that the information was true, or at least that he wanted to believe it.

“I know,” he said, the words unsure, quiet, and distant. He realized this was the first thing he’d said since he last saw Chris Redfield. He hadn’t spoken a word in confinement. Not until now.

“I can help you with your bags if you’d like,” Chris said, and he reached for the suitcase.

Piers quickly snatched the attache case from on top before saying, “This one’s special. I’d rather take it.”

“They told me about it.”

Piers nodded as the two of them started to walk towards the truck. Piers’s hand shook from the sound of the snow, from the cold, and the swell of the breeze. The inside of the truck smelled like Chris, was as disheveled as he was. It certainly reflected the owner’s personality.

“Comfortable?” Chris asked.

“Yes.”

Chris put the truck into gear, and it lurched forward as it gained traction in the snow.

~~~

Each of the houses in the town were painted bright colors, or were of different designs, something provincial and modern about it all at the same time. There was a Main Street, and it was the only street with anything on it besides houses. Chris waved to some of the people as they drove by, and Piers couldn’t help but smile at them, at their clothes, and their shopping bags.

“My parents built a cabin up here a few years before they died. Claire and I came up here for years, but then we kind of lost touch for a bit, as you know. We’ve been trying to make more of a habit of spending time together, so we’ve been stopping up here more frequently,” Chris said. “The people are great, everyone you see lives here full time, and most of the other houses are just used during the summer months.”

“Why am I here?” Piers asked bluntly.

Chris gave him a quick look. Piers returned it.

“When I found out about you washing up on shore, they wouldn’t let me see you. Some people I talked to flat out denied that you’d made it back, but I knew. You can’t help start an organization and not have a few friends higher up.”

“So, you convinced them to let me come to a picturesque village in Maine?”

“I made a deal,” Chris said. “The people here agreed to host us for a little while so you could get acclimated to being Piers again. I’m not sure what the whole plan was, but when I started contacting some lawyers, I got a faster response.”

“Which was?”

“If, after their testing, I could prove that you were perfectly fine to live outside the lab, they’d let you go. This is our not-so-controlled-environment,” Chris said.

He pulled off Main St. and down a small dirt road. Piers kept staring out the window, adjusting when he needed but still feeling hot, or angry, or upset, or something. He thought he was free, but it was just another test, and what test came after that? Were they watching? He assumed it was the BSAA, but was someone else involved?

“Penny for your thoughts?” Chris asked.

“I’m processing,” he replied. 

“Well, you’ve got plenty of time.”

The car stopped in front of a quaint, two story cabin. Beyond it, Piers could see a winding path, trees flanked left and right. It looked like a house. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to contain some excitement that it was a house, or some sadness that he was so excited to see an old cabin in the middle of the woods. It could be both, he decided.  
The furnishing were well kept, and it smelled clean, like pine, not disinfectant. It was decidedly not sterile. A simple sweep of the hand down the banister drew plenty of dust.

“I tried my best,” Chris said with a smile.

Piers felt a laugh well inside, but it didn't quite make it.

Chris led Piers upstairs to a bedroom. A window on the far side overlooked the path from before, a lake not far away through the trees. The bed was large, probably a queen, but Piers didn’t care. It was was a bed, not a cot barely large enough to contain him. There was a bathroom with a door, and a bathtub and shower. He could control how hot or cold the water was.

“I know it’s not much, but at least it’s something, right?” Chris asked.

“It’s fine. I like it,” Piers said.

“If you’re hungry, I can start working on dinner.”

Piers nodded, “Yeah, I’ll be down in a minute.”

Chris headed toward the door. He was polite enough to shut it behind him, and for the first time in a year and a half, Piers collapsed to the floor and allowed himself to weep. His fingers clenched in the carpet, his nose ran, and his body shook. It was ugly and filled with everything he kept inside. He didn’t stop until he heard Chris call from downstairs, and when he did, Piers walked to the bathroom, wiped his nose, looked at himself in the mirror and stared.

In the attache case, he pulled a small meter and lancing device out. Lifting his shirt, he drew blood from his right side and tested it on the meter. Fourteen displayed across the screen.

~~~

Chris put a plate of steak and roasted potatoes in front of him. Piers looked at it for a long time.

“No good?” Chris asked.

“It’s not that. It’s just been a while since I’ve had something that wasn’t freeze dried at some point,” Piers said.

“That bad?”

Piers decided to ignore the question and picked up his knife and fork. The first bite was a little too big, and it took him a while to get through. Chris sat down and started to eat along with him. Piers didn’t realize he was staring until Chris asked if something was wrong.

No one had eaten with Piers in the time he’d been locked away, and suddenly the idea of someone just engaging in an activity with him was, well, his body was coding it as suspicious. Piers brushed it off and started to eat again. The next bite a little more modest, he mixed it with some potatoes. He’d forgotten that things had taste.

It was obvious to him that Chris wanted to have a conversation, but he didn’t really know where to begin. Piers considered starting a conversation himself, but he didn’t have much to say. Everything had changed, and despite this being the first time he had someone he trusted to talk to about it, he couldn’t. They both pretended that everything was normal, that running an experiment in a small town was fine. All they could do was feign that this wasn’t some constructed thing.

Every moment, Piers wanted to be alone again. He’d craved so badly to be free, but now he just wanted to be in his room. There was so much more to go through, and more screaming into pillows, and crying on the floor. There was a bath waiting for him. He didn’t even like baths, but there was comfort knowing that he controlled whether or not he was taking a shower, no pressurized jets to clean him.

Another bite, and another.

“You know,” Chris said, “I thought when you got here, I’d have some sort of grand epiphany. That I’d know what to say to you, or how to make it better. I even talked with Claire because she always seemed to know what to say to me when I needed it.”

Piers looked at him, at his frustration. Chris’s hands clenched the utensils, and he glared at his food like there was some meaning hiding away. Piers could feel his jaw grow tight. There was some response, some trigger, but he couldn’t place it, so he just kept looking at Chris.

“I don’t want to push anything, but I want to be clear that I know this isn’t just some happy-go-lucky boys trip at the lakehouse. I don’t know what the fuck to say. I don’t know how to tell you to...just, I don’t know, exist?”

A pause, long, and Piers put down his knife and fork. He turned away from Chris.

“I said to much. I’m sorry.”

“No, I just can’t do this right now. I can’t,” Piers said as he stood up from the table and walked away.

“Piers! Please don’t walk away,” Chris said as he stood up. “Let’s just eat. I can stop.”

“I can’t, Captain.”

A wounded look, faint, but it was there. Chris nodded, and he sat back down at the table. Calling Chris by that title, it clearly had an effect on both of them. Piers turned and headed up the stairs. He went straight to the bathroom and vomited, a rush and all at once. He brushed his teeth. He turned the faucet on to fill the tub and closed the drain. Article by article, he removed his clothes, each one feeling almost painful to take off. There was nowhere to go, but Piers’s mind told him that he needed to do anything he could to get away.

Lowering himself into the tub, he let the water rush over him. Using his foot, he turned the faucet off, and for fifteen minutes, Piers let himself have his quiet, ears just below the surface, only the faint hum of his heart and the vague sounds of downstairs.

It would have to be enough.

~~~

The first week was rough.

Piers tried. With every question, he tried to give more words to each answer. When asked what he wanted to eat for the next meal, he tried to stop shrugging and pick something. When Chris managed to make him smile or draw him out, Piers didn’t try to force himself back inside, but he could barely make it twenty or thirty minutes before he needed to coil inside of a blanket in a cold, quiet room.

He checked his levels every few hours like he was taught. Twenty-two was the highest the number climbed. The highest he’d seen it get was eighty-nine. He never wanted to see it that high again. Piers would remind himself with every lance that he was doing what was necessary. If he could make it through whatever length of time was delineated for this experiment, then maybe he’d get what he wanted. Honestly, though, he didn’t know what that was. Surely they wouldn’t let him just waltz around on a battlefield anymore (not like before, but he wasn't naive about the nature of all this). He shrugged. Piers wasn’t so foolish as to assume he’d ever stop being watched, but perhaps the leash would be long enough that he’d stop noticing it. There was another fear, one more deeply realized than he would like to believe. He'd keep suppressing it for now, but tomorrow always seemed far away, and sometimes it wasn’t there when he thought about it.

A knock on the door nearly caused him to drop the lancing device, but he held onto it. He wiped the small drop of blood away with a swab and told Chris he could come in. He fiddled with the attache case as the door opened.

“I wanted to know if you'd like to walk into town with me. I figured it would be nice to get out of the house for a little while,” Chris said.

“Maybe next time,” Piers replied.

Silence, but then, “Okay. Then I’ll be back soon.”

Piers turned, shocked, and said, “Wait, you’re just going to leave me?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re capable of hanging around the house while I go grocery shopping.”

Piers finished what he was doing as Chris said he’d be back in about thirty minutes. When he heard the front door shut, Piers walked downstairs and stood in the middle of the living room. There was a complete quiet, a stillness that he hadn’t experienced in so long. No waiting for noises behind a door or beeping of medical equipment or the hum of bright lights. Piers sat on the couch for a moment, his feet bare and cold on the wooden floors. Heart beat and solid breath. Piers told his brain to let it sink in, being alone, and it did, in a way.

It sweltered, a sort of oozing sickness, something that started at his feet and work its way into his brain. The quiet was so loud, and it kept getting louder. His head pulled him to the left and right, that he should just run, get out when no one was looking, or to go upstairs and do something, but what that ‘something’ was, he didn’t want to think about, but it was there, on the tip of his tongue and at the edge of his mind.

The longer he sat by himself, the more his fingers started to tingle, and his heart started to pound. Piers counted in for eight and breathed out for eight. He tried focusing on a wall, tapping his fingers to his thumb in alternating patterns, but there continued this crushing, overt thing that wouldn’t leave. He stretched out on the couch, closing his eyes, hoping that maybe he could just fall asleep. Piers kept trying to push the thought away, the thought that sounded nice, the one where he didn’t wake back up. But it was so loud, and it continued to shout at him, that he’d already made a choice, and he should finish it. As he started to lull, the thought grew quiet, but it never quite left.

The lock to the door opening caused him to stir, and the ruffle of paper bags brought him out of his nap, or panic coma, or whatever it was. Chris walked across the living room and towards the kitchen. Piers sat up and offered to help carry something, but Chris assured him that he had everything under control. Items were unpacked and placed on the kitchen counter.

Chris’s surprise was obvious when he saw Piers looking through the items, and even more so when Piers started guessing what he was going to cook for dinner. 

“Nap did you good?” Chris asked.

“No, not really. I’m glad you’re home, though,” Piers said with a weak smile.

Chris’s surprise turned to a look of concern, not alarming, but again, obvious.

“What?” Piers asked.

“You’re right eye, it’s, um, it’s a little cloudy looking.”

Piers reached up and felt his cheek, his breath growing quick and distraught. He turned so sharply to leave the kitchen he nearly slipped and fell, but Chris grabbed and helped stabilize him.

“Careful. What’s going on?”

“I just need to go,” Piers said.

“Should I come with you?”

Piers scanned his face for a while, long enough that he noticed his vision grow murky in his right eye. Whatever felt like the right thing to say, Piers just left the kitchen and started to head upstairs. He could hear Chris following him, but he let it happen; he decided that Chris’s worry warranted something.

Inside the bedroom, Piers opened the attache case and check his blood on the monitor again. It read forty-three, a rather large spike. It happened sometimes when he was under duress, and apparently, the probable panic attack from being left alone was enough to cause the jump.

“What is that thing?” Chris asked.

“It monitors the concentration of C-virus levels in my blood,” Piers said. “Usually I metabolize enough that nothing happens, but sometimes the levels spike and I get to a point where things change," frightened, "I start to change.”

Chris watched as Piers removed a small tube. It opened at one end, and when he pushed down on the other, a vial with a purple solution and needle appeared. After rotating a small portion towards the top of the device, Piers lifted his shirt, placed the needle into his right side, and he pressed down on the device, a small bit of the fluid in the vial forced into his system. When he stopped pressing, the syringe automatically reset itself, and the device closed.

“It’s a concentrated Anti-C vaccine. It helps me process the virus.”

“How long does it take to work?” Chris asked.

“Fifteen minutes usually seems to be the point when it dissipates. You shouldn’t have to worry unless the virus concentration gets above seventy five. That seemed to be the point when I became contagious,” Piers said matter-of-factly.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable by being here. I just want to help.”

Piers nodded and said, “You didn’t make me uncomfortable. You probably needed to see it anyway.”

Chris shared that before he arrived, a team of BSAA researchers explained some of the things to expect, but they didn’t really give him more than a rundown of Piers’s condition, supplies, and what to do in case of an emergency. Piers assured him that signs would be obvious if things were reaching a critical state, and that there would be few reasons as to why he wouldn’t be able to take care of himself before an emergency broke out.

“That’s a lot of pressure,” Chris said.

“What?”

“I just want you to remember that you’re not in this alone, alright?”

“I am in this alone,” Piers said. “You may be here, and this may be your house, but I am very much the one this is happening to. Not you, and certainly not the people in the town.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Chris tried to recover.

“It’s fine that it wasn’t, but if something happens, I’m the one that’s responsible for it. If things go south, I’m the one that has to be taken out. I’m the variable here. Let’s not pretend it’s anything different.”

“Did that feel good to say?”

When Piers couldn’t answer, Chris gave him a nod, a grimace. Piers was taken aback that he would even ask, and there was no way to answer it. If there was one thing Piers felt he understood, it was how to read Chris. That was the reason he became his second-in-command, and it was the reason that Chris made it through the mission, all the way to the end in Lanshiang. He couldn't place Chris's question, though. It seemed taunting and piercing all at once.

"Are you trying to get a rise out of me, Chris?"

"It would be better than you saying you're fine and then running up here unable to stop yourself from breaking down."

He certainly wasn’t one to instigate a fight if other means were viable, but his fists held firm, and he had to hold something back. There was a swell, an inability to recede like before, and he could feel his teeth grind. 

“What? Are you going to hit me?”

“I don’t know!” Piers screamed. “I don’t know because I didn’t think this far ahead! This isn’t where I’m supposed to be!”

“Where are you supposed to be, Piers?”

“Dead, Chris! I’m supposed to be dead.”

It was clear that Chris didn’t know how to go about it anymore. Piers studied every part of him, and he just looked so uncomfortable. When his right hand swept across his face, Chris turned around, but for now, whatever this was, it was over. 

“Please leave,” Piers said. “Please, sir.”

Again, Chris snapped to attention when Piers recognized him as his superior. He told him that he didn’t need to say sir, or call him Captain, and Piers asked him again, calmly, to leave.

He did.

~~~

Eventually, Piers came out of his room, but it was late in the day. He hadn’t heard Chris around, though he tried to persuade himself that he wasn’t avoiding the man. Piers knew that was a lie.

What he needed was to get out for a minute. Piers didn’t know what the rules were because they were never explained, but he knew that if he remained in the house any longer, he’d implode. Slipping on a pair of sneakers, he sidled to the back door, opened it, and started to run. It took awhile for him to find a pace, but he started for the path, taking in the woods, watching his breath, feeling out the way the brush under the snow crackled from his strides. Somewhere in the middle, there was another trail that led further into the woods, and he took it. It led to a makeshift firing range, the proper precautions delicately placed. He paused for a minute, there were obvious pot shots on old targets at the far end of the range. The one on the left was terribly inaccurate, but the one on the right had nice grouping. Piers couldn’t tell how long they’d been out there, the moisture from the snow speeding up the decay of the old paper targets, but there was something comical about the one on the left, how bad it was.

After a few more moments, he took off back down the path, turned off where he hadn’t run yet, and after a few minutes, he came across the lake, a worn dock leading far out into the frozen water. Piers estimated the lake was at least a mile wide at its longest. Maine was known for its lakes, and this one certainly wasn’t a disappointment. He started to run along the shore, a somewhat obvious path around it, probably more conducive to a run in the spring and summer, but it was what he had, so he was going to use it.

By the time he got back, bright red cheeks and sweaty, he opened the back door of the house and took off the jacket he was wearing. Exercise was good for the virus concentration, something he learned throughout the program. So many things tested in and out over the course of eight months. Did alcohol or other stimulants cause spikes? What were the effects of red meat? Constant blood tests, urine tests, stool samples, sweat markers, saliva. A rat. Piers wasn’t supposed to be a rat. That’s not why he did what he did. Hell, he didn’t even do it to be a hero. 

Piers did it because he knew it was what needed to be done.

When his breathing calmed, Piers heard Chris talking faintly. He followed the sound to the master bedroom at the far end of the first floor of the cabin. Chris spoke openly, and by the way he addressed the person, even without a name, Piers assumed he was talking to Claire Redfield. The man would mumble something, then make some sounds of confirmation, say something before, likely, being cut off, and then he’d grunt again.

Piers remembered Chris saying that he went to Claire for guidance on how to handle talking with him, and he heard him defend what he’d done the night before, that he’d seen no other way to get Piers to try and open up. But this wasn’t what held him, eavesdropping, at the door. A confirmation of something he knew from the very beginning, Chris said he was uninterested in proving that Piers was capable of following orders as he’d done before, that it wasn’t the point of why he fought so hard for his deal with the BSAA research team. He said he felt giving Piers a chance at life was the least he could do. 

_The least he could do._

A quick draw of breath, Piers walked away from the door and went upstairs. He’d always known that the reason he wasn’t exterminated immediately was because he probably had use, whether it was the fact that he survived and could provide a better understanding of the C-virus, or because of some of the side effects of his infection. It was explicit if unstated. Hearing it though, out loud, making it just that more real, it caused that quaking, undermining rage again.

The hot shower was enough to bring some feeling back into his cheeks, and he took the time to check his virus concentration. It was in the low teens. When he went back downstairs, Chris was sitting at the kitchen table. Piers wasn’t sure whether he was aware of him listening in on the previous conversation with Claire, so he just gave a nod and sat down in the seat next to Chris. He tried to hold himself together.

“You went out,” Chris said.

“For a run, yeah. It keeps things on track,” Piers replied, and he looked down at his hands. “I found your shooting range.”

“It’s not much, but it’s something.”

Piers suggested they go shooting if Chris was interested. Chris actually perked up with him wanting to engage in something. He followed Chris to the master bedroom where he watched him open a small gun cabinet, a four-digit lock on the front. He held onto two unloaded pistols as Chris loaded a few magazines. Chris handed Piers a holster, and then a small pouch to hold the magazines. 

They brought two fresh targets out, and it didn’t take long for the old ones to be replaced. They pretty much fell off the stands when touched. The first magazine was slow. There was little small talk, but in between shots they had a few words, most of it cordial at best, but they didn’t talk about last night.

The second magazine was a little faster, the obvious lack of communication more apparent. When Chris fired the last shot of the magazine, he suggested a little contest. He’d been the best marksmen in S.T.A.R.S. and the BSAA until Piers came along. 

“This the first time you’ve done target practice since…?” he trailed off.

“Yeah.”

“Well, let’s see if you’ve still got it,” Chris said.

Piers loaded the magazine after he ejected the last clip. Looking down the sight, he fired rapidly, every shot grouped right around the center of the target, though when he saw that Chris had done the same, Piers slammed the gun down on the small wooden bench that demarcated where the range started. Chris watched as he extended his right arm; Piers focused on the target.

“What are you doing?”

Piers’s fingers twisted, mangled, and then fell off completely, long barbs forming and protruding from his skin, all the way up his arm, the jacket sleeve torn to shreds. His shoulder bucked and snapped, and the skin up his neck and towards his right eye mutated, fetid and green. Electricity arched across the spines, his eye milky white with two pupils. A sudden discharge and a bright blue flash, the target at the end of the range exploded in fire.

Piers lowered the arm when the energy dissipated. A few seconds later, it fell off completely and crumpled to the ground by his feet, decomposing almost immediately. Skin and bone already started to form in its place. He felt woozy, and he stumbled slightly, all the fury he’d been holding onto burned through the poor target.

Voice distorted slightly, he said, “This is why they wanted to keep me alive.”

“Piers, I….”

His shoulder buckled again, and a fully formed arm extended out. Piers didn’t wait to start back for the house, leaving the gun and empty magazines where they were on the bench. He didn’t listen for Chris, to know if he was following.

Piers took his virus concentration. It was in the high seventies. Pulling out the syringe, he clicked the allotment up to four notches.

“Why’d you do four clicks?” Chris said from behind him.

Piers startled and turned. A jumbled, he inserted the needle and gave himself a dose of Anti-C. When he’d put the device back in the attache case, he said, “I have to give myself one click per fifteen points to balance it out. It’s still tentative research, so the math doesn’t shake out exactly….”

“And you asked me to take you out shooting because?”

Piers met his gaze. 

“You wanted to know where the guns were kept.”

He nodded to Chris.

With tears in his eyes, Chris said, “And what exactly where you planning on doing with that information?”

His reaction made Piers uncomfortable, or at least, that was the best word he could muster to describe it. Killing himself was an option he’d been considering for some time, and while an overdose of the vaccine would do it, the effects were undocumented, and Piers didn’t feel like he could take the risk, not knowing what might happen to him...to Chris. The guns were the logical next best thing. The thought had been so easy, but seeing him, seeing Chris, his Captain, the one he died for, standing in front of him, tears in his eyes, asking him what he was planning on doing, it at least made him pause. 

“Don’t suppress it. Tell me what I can do. Please, Piers. Tell me how I can even start to help,” Chris said. “I know about repressing feelings. Hell, it’s pretty much how we got into this mess.”

Again, he said we.

“You shouldn’t be here, Captain. My virus concentration is high enough that I’m reaching a….”

“Is that it? Are you frightened that you’ll make me sick? Did you destroy the target because you thought when I saw it, it would scare me away?”

Piers backed up against the bed as he said, “I don’t want to be something that people control. I don’t want the BSAA using B.O.W.s like Umbrella. I didn’t fight for an organization to see it become like..., for me to be some weapon that does as it’s told! It’s better if I just….”

“End it?”

Piers couldn’t look at him. His hands covered his eyes and tears fell down to his chin. When he heard Chris take a step forward, he held out his hands, desperately, “No! Don’t come any closer.”

Chris stopped. 

“There’s actually a chance I’m contagious right now,” Piers said with a small laugh. “Just give it a few minutes.”

“I’m not afraid, Piers.”

“I understand,” he said, “but I am.”

~~~

The following week brought a better understanding between Chris and Piers. When Chris refused to leave his room unless he promised to tell him if he was feeling suicidal, Piers assured him that he would continue to feel suicidal for a while, but he promised he’d let Chris know if the thought was getting the better of him. It seemed enough for Chris, and the two started to build their relationship again, and it became easier to pick things back up.

Their conversations flowed, no longer relying on some necessity for common ground. Instead, they just talked, and it was nice, felt right. Piers was coy with a lot of information, feelings he still wasn’t ready to talk about or unpack, but he started to feel comfortable. He noticed it in little things, like he wouldn’t move away when Chris got closer to him, and he didn’t flinch if Chris touched him. Contact had been a strictly scientific endeavour, something unsafe but necessary. Now it felt, well, good. Piers could sense happiness when he went for a run. He even let Chris convince him to go into town, to leave the car, and to be with people. He still stood behind Chris, closely, but the fact that he was around others, that he said hello and talked to people with seemingly no ulterior motives but to be friendly.

The brown bottle made a heavy thud when it hit the kitchen table.

“Alcohol can make my virus concentration spike,” Piers said.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Chris responded.

While it certainly wasn’t the best idea, it had been quite a long time since he’d had a drink. One couldn’t hurt.

“Claire asked if she could come up for Christmas next week,” Chris said. “Jill, too. Would that be okay with you?”

“You’re asking me? It’s your house.”

Chris cocked his right eyebrow, perturbed.

“Yeah, it’s alright by me,” Piers said with a little smile as he took another swig from the bottle.

The second round was at one of the little restaurants on Main St. Despite making him incredibly uncomfortable, Piers decided he needed to take steps, to start recognizing that he was allowed to be in public. Getting food to take home was fine, but eating someplace, being there for an hour, two hours, it felt unsafe. He was proud of himself, that he stayed.

The third round came after they went by the general store to pick up more alcohol, and the fourth was over Chris starting the fire. Piers monitored himself well, but there was something about not being completely in control that felt good. Even in his tipsy state, Piers noted that feeling and decided to create healthy boundaries, but that would be something he worked on tomorrow. Tonight was about pretending that none of it had happened. For one night, he wanted to pretend this was just some boys trip in the woods.

“I’m going to get another,” Chris said as he stood up, the fire starting to crackle behind him.

“Oh, get me one,” Piers said. He finished off the bottle he was holding and placed it nicely next to round three. 

Chris sat at the opposite end of the couch from Piers. The two of them stared into the fire for quite some time without speaking. A weak smile spread across Piers’s face as he came to the unsubtle realization, his mind unable to stay quiet, the worry creeping that his levels were getting off track despite no signs of that being the case. The longer he stared into the fire, the less he could deny it, that all of this was fun, but it wasn’t what he needed, and even that seemed out of reach, but he decided to at least try and start.

“You okay?” Chris asked, as though he knew, and part of Piers thought he did. The reason they were paired together, the reason Chris picked him, and how Piers was always right where he needed to be to fire a shot for Chris, it was because of some anticipation they had.

“No, I’m not,” he replied. “I, I thought I could pretend for one night that everything was fine, but I couldn’t even make it a few hours, and now I’m drunk, and I’m worried I’m gonna turn into some monster because I was irresponsible.”

“You’re not gonna turn into a monster, Piers. It was just a couple of beers.”

“I mean, logically I understand that, but my brain won’t stop telling me the opposite. I know all of this is new, but I just feel like I’m never going to stop hearing the little voice.”

“I’m sure we can find a way to get to that point, but it’ll probably take a while.”

“We?” he asked, Chris saying it again irked him so much. “I already told you, this isn’t happening to you.”

“Okay, okay, I didn’t mean to rile you up.”

A terrible thought lodged in his mind, Piers said, “Why have you decided to be so helpful?”

Chris sat up, eyes narrowing, “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You just looking out for me, Captain?”

That look again, the third time now, and then, “You’re my partner, Piers. Of course I’m looking out for you.”

“You don’t like it when I call you Captain. You didn’t like it when I called you sir, either,” and he needed to pick, and pick, and pick at the scab even more. “Only altruistic intentions? Just a humanitarian effort? Certainly this isn’t the least you could do.”

“Why don’t you just come out and say what you’re thinking, Piers.”

“I don’t think this is about me at all. I think this is about guilt. I think that’s why it’s about us and we. You’re just trying to make yourself feel better.”

“Is that what you think?” Chris asked.

“You know, not once have I thought ‘gee, because of him, I’m in this situation,’ but I bet you’ve thought it,” Piers said, some part of him tried to stop, but that part was overshadowed by a horrible realization, whether it was true or not.

Chris didn’t speak, but his lower jaw quivered slightly, and his eyes moved back and forth rapidly. 

“Nothing to say, Captain?”

Chris put his beer on the table in front of him, next to round three and four. “I don’t need to listen to this shit,” he said as he stood up and headed to the master bedroom, the door slamming behind him.

Piers finished the beer he had and went upstairs. He was in the high forties, and while he wanted to blame his outburst on elevated levels, he decided to claim responsibility. It was the least he could do since he started and finished it. Piers couldn’t stop thinking about why he did it though, after things were going so well. Was it because he needed Chris’s intentions to be pure? The thought that the only person that seemed to have his best interest in mind was simply playing to make himself feel better was too much.. His self-doubt so high, he assumed it was the only reason that Chris would put himself on the line like that. Piers rolled his eyes, as though Chris hadn’t defended him, supported him, fought for him in the past.

Opening the attache case, he looked down at the syringe. He started to prep the needle, the process becoming second nature. Pulling up his shirt, he moved the syringe about an inch from his side, put his finger on the dial to adjust his dosage, and then he hesitated. Joints locked up, and mind screaming, Piers held because it was the best option, better than the thing his mind was telling him to do.

They told him they didn’t know, didn’t know what might happen if he overdose on it, but they knew that patients with C-Virus didn’t survive the vaccine if they already showed symptoms, but for some reason the same didn’t hold with Piers. They told him the C-virus in his system that allowed him his abilities, the C-virus that was mutated and metabolized by him, the thing he feared, that made him a monster, that could kill him and other people if he wasn’t careful, was the same thing that kept him alive. At a virus concentration of one or two, his body started to break down. It had to maintain a sort of homeostasis. Too much Anti-C and he ended up like all the other poor saps that got the vaccine too late. Death, or worse.

Maybe that was it, the answer. Make it go to zero. Cure himself. He had what he needed. What if he just cured the infection right now. Three clicks, or four, instead of the one or two he needed. It would be so easy. It would be….

“What the fuck do you want?” Chris said after several sustain rounds of banging on his door.

“I need help,” Piers said holding out the syringe, shaking all over.

Chris looked him up and down, a little confused at first, but he pulled him in the room and sat him on the bed, then he took the syringe from him and looked it over as though he was trying to find something wrong with it.

“I just need you to give me the shot, and then I need you to hide it,” Piers said weakly, shame smeared through every word.

Chris sat on the bed next to him. Piers showed him how to prep the injection and said to give the dial for dosage two clicks. Chris did as he was told, lifted Piers’s shirt, and then hesitated.

“I think this is the first time I’ve given someone a shot and it wasn’t a jab of adrenaline,” Chris said as he pushed the device against Piers lightly and squeezed the button to release the vaccine. “Hope I didn’t hurt you.”

Piers laughed at him.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was so terrible to you. I’ve been terrible to you,” he replied, tired and drunk. “I should just be happy that you gave a shit about me, enough to get me out of that lab, and you keep asking me how you can help, but honestly, I don’t know how you can help, and asking me isn’t going to help me figure it out any faster.”

“Hey, it’s okay. Besides, you were at least half right. Before I found out I was, I was honestly lost. I kept doing my job, the job you asked me to do because I didn’t know what else to do. Then I found out you were alive? I, I felt like I needed to do something, anything. The guilt’s there….”

“I’m sorry, Chris,” Piers said, sudden. “But just know that, um, I’m not going to break my promise to you, so just, just keep the medicine here for the night, and I’ll leave you alone for a bit.”

“I’m glad you came down here instead of doing something else.”

Piers agreed. Chris reminded him that should something come up in the night, he just had to come down to get him. Piers nodded and headed to bed. Another night, and another start from square one. 

~~~

The smell of bacon and fried eggs brought him downstairs. Chris made him a plate, and the two of them sat down to eat. Piers made himself a cup of coffee after he finished his first, and he brought Chris some when he asked. It felt like a pretty normal breakfast despite the hysterics of last night, perhaps a bit of an understatement, but Piers wasn’t about to forgive himself for the way he acted.

Chris cleared the plates when they were finished and started to wash them off in the sink.

“You know, I was worried about you,” Piers said from the table. “I mean, I knew you were going to be fine, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what you were going to do without me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“After it happened, you know, when you left.”

“When I was pushed?”

“Yeah, pushed,” Piers said. “I was worried sick about you, honestly. Chris Redfield, in the field, and I wasn’t there to look after you.”

“I’ll have you know that I’ve accomplished a few things without you in my life. My fear of ants is just one example,” Chris said. “And spiders. God, I hate spiders.”

Chris loaded the dishwasher, and then he returned to the table. He picked at his fingers for a moment before he said, “If you want honesty, god, I was so fucking mad at you.”

“I remember. ‘Open the damn door,’ is what I think you shouted at me.”

Chris was silent, hands folded in front of him, eyes cast down and looking off to the left. He jumped slightly when Piers put a hand over his.

“Hey, I’m here. It’s me. It happened, but that was my choice, okay?”

“I never thought I was going to see you again,” Chris said. 

Piers stood up and started to head for the stairs. He said he wanted to get a run in before the clouds came. They were supposed to get another layer of snow overnight. When he came back downstairs, he found Chris sitting at the table still. Piers asked if he could borrow a jacket. He realized he ripped through the lighter one he brought with him at the shooting range, and he didn’t want to run in the heavy, insulated one.

Chris nodded, stood, went to his bedroom and returned with a jacket that was at least two sizes too big for Piers. He handed it over to him.

Piers took it, then, “Thanks.”

The two stood like this for a while, squared up, but open, close but still a little space, a sort of moment, palpable, enough that Piers said, entirely earnest and full, “I never thought I was going to see you again, either.”

A few breaths, slow and steady. Piers took a small step forward, and he could feel Chris get close even without him moving, just a way that he shaped himself in the moment. Piers placed his hand to the right of his face, just behind the ear, and he pulled into Chris, the kiss was swift, but it happened, felt like it needed to be there, but that he also needed to step away. Bright red, cheeks ablaze, Piers put the jacket on, though he fumbled with the zipper.

“I think your jacket’s broken,” Piers said.

Chris reached over, zipped it in one go, and said, “Nope, I think it’s fine.”

When Chris put both hands behind Piers’s head, kissed him slow, but some weight in it, and stepped away, Piers was even more red than he was before. He backed up to the door, tried to open it but realized it was locked, could barely get the lock open, and then gave up. He moved to Chris, and they kissed by the kitchen table. Chris picked Piers up, and soon they were kissing in the living room, bumping into the couch and knocking it a foot out of place. Piers fell off of Chris and hit the floor, Chris landing next to him.

“Shit, are you okay?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Piers said. 

“Is something broken?”

“No, I just. I’m kind of feeling a lot of things right now.”

They remained on the floor for quite some time. Chris slowly reached his hand over, skin touching to Piers’s hand.

“Oh no,” he said, breathy and sullen, as he took Chris’s hand, and they just laid there together.

~~~

The number of times he’d oscillated back and forth on it was confusing both of them, but Chris was patient and completely understood, or at least said that he did. Piers decided to believe him because there was no reason not to, but it didn’t stop Piers from pacing back and forth in front of Chris while he sat on the couch. Chris kept trying to get him to sit down, but there was an overload happening, and Piers didn’t know what to do about it. That’s when he encouraged him to sit down again, and finally Piers listened.

They agreed to move the couch back where it was supposed to be when they settled on what to do next.

“It was a lot,” Piers said, or explained, or summed up.

“I wasn’t really expecting it,” Chris said, “but I’m not upset it happened. Are you?”

“No, well, yes, but also no?”

“Maybe we should just stop thinking about it for a little while.”

“How?” Piers nearly screamed. “Last night I was thinking about killing myself, to the point that I knocked on your door near inconsolable, and today we’re having a fun romp of the floor. How am I not supposed to think about this? How am I not supposed to sit and worry about what would have happened if this went further, what could happen to you.”

“I already told you I’m….” Chris paused, “No, this is about how you’re feeling, not me.”

Piers calmed down enough to look over at him and smile. At least Chris was listening.

“I’m just saying, I had the Anti-C vaccine, so we’re good there. Let’s just keep it at that. And as far as I’m aware, it’s perfectly reasonable to be suicidal and happy at the same time, well, maybe not at exactly the same time, but adjacent?”

“I love what’s happening, but I want to be dead,” Piers said. “Sure.”

When Piers’s knee started jostling, Chris put a hand on his shoulder. He started to feel it, that Chris really was there for him, that maybe, just maybe, they were in this together. At least in some way. Not the kiss, no, but how Chris acted, changed his language, stayed a bit away but still made contact. Piers had been so focused on the things he’d been doing that he hadn’t taken stock that Chris was trying to alter the way he approached things, too.

“I’m overwhelmed,” Piers said flatly.

“I can see that.”

“I’m scared, and I’m tired, and I don’t know who I am anymore, and I’m overwhelmed by what happened. I can’t go back there, Chris. I can’t be put in a little white room, and I’m sick of the needles, and,” the words kept coming, over and over, another things to fear, something else that caused such a strain that Piers couldn’t think about anything other than the next minute, let alone the next hour or even day.

“And you’re actually talking to me about what you’re feeling,” Chris finally said.

Piers rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his shirt, a little trail of snot left behind, but he took stock in what Chris said. It was true, at least he was being honest.

“And I can assure you the only way you’re going back to some BSAA research facility is over my dead body, so that’s one less thing you need to worry about, too. Replace it with us making out,” Chris said with a laugh.

Piers gazed at him intently, and asked directly, “You aren’t hiding anything from me, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“About this? About all of this. You don’t know something about terms or rules or whatever that you’re not telling me.”

“The only thing I know is that Claire got me in contact with some lawyers through Terrasave, and when they came knocking, that’s when I got word we could make a deal. I don’t know what the lawyers hammered out expressly, but I knew that I’d be given as much time as I needed to show you were ‘prepared for reintegration into the BSAA.’ Now, I don’t know exactly what that means aside from it being a bunch of shit. You made it pretty clear what you think ‘prepared for reintegration’ means, and I’m not going to pretend you’re wrong about it.”

“What happens if I’m not prepared?”

“It’s not going to happen so it’s not something you need to worry about. I didn’t even have to throw clout to get the men to support your release. Claire and her lawyers told me to do whatever I could to get you out because it would make it that much harder for them to take you back. As far as I’m concerned, the BSAA has no claim to you, and now’s the time to use them for their research and live the longest, happiest life you can. You didn’t do what you did just so a bunch of people could treat you like anything less than the human being you are. I’d stake my life on that, and they know I’ll prove it if I have to.”

“Would you believe me if I told you that when I ripped off my arm and dragged myself across the floor of an underwater, mad laboratory just so I could inject myself with a deadly virus that I never imagined my life could be so complicated?”

“Be happy, you haven’t entirely lost your sense of humor,” Chris said.

“I didn’t really have much of a sense of humor to begin with.”

“Less to build back up then?”

“You’re terrible at this.”

~~~

They started walking to the store together to pick up dinner every day. Sometimes Chris would join Piers on his runs, though often times he just slowed Piers down, but he didn’t completely mind. They went to the general store, and as embarrassed as he was about it, Chris gave him money to purchase small things for Jill and Claire for Christmas. 

Piers tried not to hide that the feelings were still there, or that they weren’t loud. His self-loathing was no better, and his need to retire to his room at least once a day was still a necessity, but at least it was better than every twenty to thirty minutes. Chris kept the syringe hidden and the gun case locked per Piers’s request. When the need arose for a shot, Chris would retrieve the Anti-C and hide it again. Piers assured him it was just for the time being, and Chris always said he believed him.

Piers knew he did.

When it was time for Claire and Jill to arrive, Chris and Piers spent the morning cleaning the house and making sure there was plenty of food since the grocery store was planning to be shut down for a few days. They planned the menu for Christmas together and delineated a few tasks for Piers to complete if he was feeling up to it. What could have felt patronizing was well placed and handled with a certain care. Above all, Chris and Piers were learning what needed to be done, when to engage, when to back off, and with each passing day, Piers would admit he felt stronger. He was worried to be around other people, that it felt different than just quick trips into town. This admission was a positive step, and he worked to find ways to express when he was feeling a particular way. Before Lianshang, it came easy, yet he rarely did it, and now it was necessary for survival, but he struggled. Piers could start seeing in hours again, and sometimes as far out as a week, so he was getting there, somewhere. The struggle felt worth it.

“I’m pretty sure we’ll all understand if you need to take a moment for yourself. One step at a time, and let’s be honest, Jill and Claire aren’t exactly a small step.”

Claire arrived just before dusk. She blamed the delay on having to put chains on her tires for the second half of the trip from the airport. She dropped her bags when she gave Chris a hug. Claire’s smile was just as warm and kind as he remembered. Piers didn’t get to meet with Claire very often, but he’d at least had the opportunity to speak with her in person a few times, and they had corresponded through email with some frequency, though most of it was updates on whether or not Chris was alive. He was always terrible at checking in, so Piers felt responsible, back in the day, to check in for him.

“Piers, it’s so good to see you,” Claire said as she gave him a hug, something about it entirely strong, sincere, and comforting all at once.

“It’s good to see you, too, ma’am, um, Claire,” Piers said.

When she pulled away, she chastised him slightly. Claire reminded him to cut out the ma’am thing. Piers agreed to it.

“Am I in the usual room?” Claire asked.

“Nope, you’ll be in the master bedroom. I’m on the couch, Piers is in the guest room, and Jill’s taking your room.”

“Master treatment,” Claire said with a wink to Piers. “I could get used to this. It comes with baggage delivery, right?”

Chris rolled his eyes and took the bags to her room. In the brief time that he was gone, Claire took Piers to the kitchen and asked for an update on how he was doing, feeling, if things had settled down a little between him and Chris. She revealed that Chris had called her a few times about some of the more difficult conversations that happened, her honestly always refreshing. Piers assured her that things had smoothed out a good bit since he’d arrived, though he omitted some of his update to her, and he certainly hoped Chris hadn’t been forthcoming about the kiss.

When Chris joined them, he grabbed a few beers from the fridge and opened one for each of them. Piers was hesitant, but a part of him decided he needed to give it another shot, not that drinking was important in that way (though what soldier didn’t have some complicated relationship with alcohol), but that he needed to be able to let his guard down.

“When’s Jill supposed to get here?” Claire asked.

“Closer to ten, I think,” Chris said. 

“Drink slow then, Piers,” Claire responded with a smile. “No one can keep pace with Jill, and she’ll go until at least 2am.”

Piers just watched the two of them, the way they spoke to each other, laughed, shook their heads, and groaned. You could see it, all over them, that they were siblings, and there was something beautiful in it. He’d only had brief time to spend with the two of them together, but he admired something about the way they caught up, like no time had passed. At no point did he feel left out of the conversation. Claire always took the time to approach him with questions, regale something and relate it back to emails they’d sent years ago. She was sharp and kept Chris on his toes in a way that Piers had never seen.

When the second knock came at the door, Chris stood up to answer it, Claire and Piers trailing behind him.

“It’s good to see you, Chris,” Jill Valentine said as she placed her bag off to the side and gave her old partner a hug.

“How have you been, Jill?”

“Better,” she said, though the moment her eyes connected with Piers and Claire, a brightness that wasn’t there before illuminated. Piers saw something he wasn’t supposed to.

Jill and Claire also embraced, the nature of their relationship not seeming far off from the bond that Claire and Chris had. Claire commented that her hair was brown again, something Jill appreciated greatly.

When it was Piers’s turn to greet her, he had little context for what to do. He’d only met her once, in passing, and it was for a minute, maybe two. She’d scanned a few sheets of paper after a field test, looked him up and down, and told him not to let anything happen to Chris. 

Her handshake was firm, and she looked him square in the eyes, a slight nod as she said it was nice to see him again. Piers assumed that she wouldn’t have remembered.

“It’s nice to see you, too, ma’am, um, Jill,” Piers said, embarrassed that he’d done the same thing that he’d done with Claire.

“No, that’s ma’am to you,” Jill said with harsh intonation, and she sauntered past him towards the kitchen.

“Don’t look so wounded,” Claire reacted. “She’s just messing with you. The trick is to show no fear.”

Claire wandered into the kitchen, a few seconds later the sound of two bottles clinking together filled the house. Chris gave Piers a small pat on the shoulder and told him not to worry so much. He wasted no time letting him know that Jill was rough around the edges, but he echoed Claire’s sentiment: The only way to make it through was to show no fear. Piers couldn’t help but feel like this was some underhanded scheme that Chris had prepared to test his mettle.

Piers took a little time to stand back, to see the three of them in the kitchen. They had a long history together, even if some of that history didn’t exactly overlap. Their experiences defined a generation of people, spurred others into action, including himself. Jill Valentine was the first person to kill a constructed B.O.W. Chris and Claire stopped the spread of a virulent, mutated form of the T-virus, and their accomplishments continued for several sustained years.

He was part of the story for only three, before his chapter was forced to end. Chris honored Piers by continuing to fight, and Claire served the world by being an advocate for those that were affected by travesty. What did Piers want when this was all over? Freedom had been the goal, but what happened when that was achieved? After Chris told him that he would fight, tooth-and-nail, for Piers to just live his life, Piers needed to decide what freedom looked like. The concept was too daunting to try and resolve for now.

And then there was Jill. After 2009, there was little information on what happened to her. Piers was aware she was sent to rehabilitation. It was part of the reason Chris scouted him, but lingering rumors said that she never participated in another mission. When Piers met her, Chris said it was after her release, the spring of 2010, before his first mission in Australia. Her blessing was rote, the kind any old partner might pass along. He would have liked something more profound from the legendary Jill Valentine, but like the stories went, she defied what expectations he had, just not exactly the way he’d assumed.

Piers had seen the tired in her eyes. 

After it had been long enough to be weird, the kind of stalling that probably showed how much he felt like he didn’t belong with the three of them, he wandered over, the conversation more about catching up than anything else. Claire explained to Piers, between topics, that she had a firm rule that they not talk about work unless it was absolutely necessary. The loss of time between people that were completely enveloped by the job was especially dubious when one slip up meant you never came home. Piers would know, well, kind of.

“What about you, though?” Jill asked. “How’re you doing? Really.”

Piers couldn’t tell if she was prying or if she was seriously worried about him. When her head cocked to the side expectantly, it made her question all the more impenetrable.

“We’ve been getting along pretty well, haven’t we, Piers?” Chris said, a distinct break in tension felt.

“Yes ma’am. It’s been a mixed bag, but I think we’ve found a way to get a handle on things,” Piers responded.

“That’s good to hear,” she said and took a large chug of the beer she held. “I’m going out for a smoke. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Jill walked to her purse, grabbed a pack of cigarettes, and she opened the door to the back deck and closed it gently behind her. Piers questioned if he’d done something wrong, but Claire explained that Jill was astute at feeling people out, and sometimes that came across in a special way. Chris just looked out into the dark, the obvious embers of the cigarette faintly glowing between drags. 

Claire set the table, Piers and Chris brought the food over, and Jill poured the wine. Effervescent yet somehow melancholy at first, there was a certain energy impossible for Piers to place, but it swelled, grew the longer the four of them had the opportunity to be each other, surrounded by each other.

“So, I don’t think I told you this story, Piers. It was when Jill and I were on a mission in Madrid,” Chris started.

“You’d better shut up, or you’ll be sorry,” Jill said.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Claire interjected, “because if he doesn’t tell the story, I will.”

“Anyway! We’re sitting in this little bar, and we have a meeting the next morning with some guy that owned something or another,” Chris continued.

“He was a cabinet minister in the Government Community of Madrid. Did you ever actually read the dossiers?” Jill said as she threw her napkin across the table. “If you’re going to tell the story, at least tell it right.” She took a sip of wine, “Chris convinced me to hit on some guy in the bar because he was so sure the guy was giving me ‘the look,’ as Chris calls it. It didn’t go so well, some things might have been spilt on him, and either way, he left in a huff, and we may have done very little to keep from causing a scene. Like, we were the scene. Turns out, the guy that we publicly embarrassed in this bar was the guy we were meeting with the next morning.”

“Jill lost it,” Chris said.

“And you vomited in his trash can the next morning, so who really looked like an idiot?”

“Both of you,” Claire said. “The moral of the story is you both were the idiot.”

Piers hid his smile behind his hand, unsure if it was safe to laugh at either Chris or Jill, but he was certainly more worried about what the latter might think. 

“Don’t laugh,” Jill said to Piers. “You better not encourage him to think it’s a good story. Besides, I told him he’d pay, and I’ve got proof.”

“Don’t do it, Jill,” Chris muttered.

“Claire told me that she’d never been able to get her hands on a picture of Chris when he was younger,” Jill said as went over to the luggage still by the door.

“You have a picture?” Piers said, pretending like he hadn’t asked Claire for one a hundred times.

Chris was obviously embarrassed when she slapped the photo down onto the table. The edges were torn slightly, and there were several folds in it. Piers could tell she’d carried it with her for a long time, a date in the corner saying it was from 1998. His excitement was there, and seeing a picture of Chris just after he’d been involved in the Arklay Mountain Incident was certainly an experience, but the photo landed far from where Piers imagined it would. The amount that Chris had changed was shocking. Now, he was almost twice the size as the young man in the photograph. Piers smiled when he looked over at Chris, but it was to hide something. Chris had certainly spent a lot of time building himself up between 1998 and now, but Piers held onto Chris’s embarrassment, that there was something that made him change, a reason strong enough that he didn’t want the members of his team to know what he looked like before they knew Chris Redfield, their Captain.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Claire said. “Chris always knew I was looking for them, so anytime I was at his apartment or here, he’d hide them.”

“Come on,” Chris rolled his eyes. “Put it away.”

Piers slid it across the table to Jill, and she took it back to the luggage. Again, Piers felt like he saw something he wasn’t supposed to.

They opened another bottle of wine and continued talking, stories that brought joy and ones that could be told because someone was there that had never heard them. Even Piers found voice long enough to tell some stories from the barracks, a night he had to literally drag Chris to the jeep, the circumstances more complicated than just a long night at the bar.

“Can we make fun of someone else for a minute,” Chris laughed. “A guy can only take so much.”

“We do it because we love you,” Claire said. 

“I do it because it’s fun,” Jill corrected.

Chris stood up and cleared the table and a moment later, Piers decided to help him. The night slowly started to draw to a close, the conversation turning quiet as one by one they went to sleep, Piers the first to head up to his room, the wine getting to him.

The others went to bed around midnight, but Piers could smell the faint waft of cigarette smoke through his window well past 3:30am. Jill’s footsteps sounded through the house when the backdoor closed. He could hear some exchange between her and Chris, heated, and then the sound of her climbing the steps, walking down the hall and past his room. Piers rolled over and pulled the sheets around himself, tightly. So focused, lost and drifting somewhere between sleep and thought, he nearly missed a faint knock.

Piers unraveled himself and opened the door. Chris stood there, silently and small, or at least as small as he could be. Piers stepped out of the way, and Chris entered the room. He shut the door. They didn’t speak, and for a long time, they just sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders touching and looking into the dark. 

This was what being heroes looked like.

~~~

Piers put the syringe back in the attache case. He decided to trust himself for the time being. When Claire and Jill asked questions about what he was doing when he took his virus concentration, he felt more comfortable being open with them, talking about it, and trying his best to understand that as much as he hated it, it was always going to be there. Piers realized that he would never deal with it. It just was.

While on his way back from a run, he heard the distinct sounds of gunshots. Claire dropped the clip when the last casing ejected. She reached behind her, pulled another magazine and began to fire at the target. She hadn’t changed the paper from when Chris and Piers had been there. The weather had helped clear some of the burnt out side he’d been on, but there was still some evidence that something beyond gunshots hit the target.

He waited for her to finish her last shot before he made himself known. She didn’t flinch, but she did nod to him, not the smile she often had. Even Claire needed a moment to rest.

“Finish a run? Must be hard with the snow.”

“It’s not the best, but I’ll take what I can get,” Piers said.

“I’m sure you will having been trapped for as long as you were,” Claire said, something bitter about it.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Sometimes being here is hard. I can’t help but be reminded of a lot of things, all at once, and very quickly, but I’m not going to bore you with all that. Besides, you need to be taking care of yourself right now, not me.”

“If you need to talk, I can listen,” Piers said. “I want to.”

Their relationship hazy in definition, Piers considered Claire a friend, but the amount of time they spent together was so limited, and they rarely touched on anything serious when they spoke via email. He’d always felt a sort of connection to Claire, but he had no way of pinpointing exactly where that started and ended for her. 

“That’s very sweet of you. My job puts me in the unique position of providing care work for a lot of people, and sometimes I forget to provide that for myself. I’m frustrated that I work as much as I do, but I still feel like I haven’t done enough. I’m the one with the no-work-talk, and here I am, talking about it.”

“Very generally,” Piers said with a little laugh, “so I’ll give you a pass.”

She removed the last clip and replaced it with another magazine. Claire engaged the safety on the gun and holstered it for a moment as she leaned against a tree, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.

“Why are you giving me that look?” Piers asked.

“I’m just taking you in,” she said. “I haven’t seen you very much, and I was just admiring how nice it was to see you again. I won’t lie, I sometimes get nostalgic. It’s why I encourage Jill and Chris to tell their stories even though I’ve heard them a thousand times. Their work took them places, and sometimes it feels like my work was dropped in my lap. A lot happened, and very early in my life, so I like hearing stories over and over again, and I really like looking at people I care about. I know we aren’t incredibly close, but I’m glad Terrasave was able to help in some way, Piers.”

“You take it personally?”

“Very much so,” Claire said, “and you should take it personally, too.”

Piers unzipped his jacket because he overheated slightly, the cold worked well against the sudden flare of anger he had, not at Claire, but at the BSAA, something he hadn’t thought to be until she said it. He’d been preoccupied with being trapped in the white room, the tests, and the needles. For the first time, Piers wanted to hold them accountable for hiding him, not trusting him after everything he’d given, but that came with something, the reason such a catalyst hadn’t existed until this moment. Piers didn’t trust himself, so how could he demand it from someone else?

“I just know that it’s hard to see your own value sometimes, Piers, so make sure you take a moment to give yourself a good, long look in the mirror. Be someone you care about,” she said.

“I’ll be sure to remind you to do the same thing,” Piers replied.

“Good, I like that arrangement.”

Claire fired the gun, rounds sustained at a very steady pace, and with each shot, she stabilized the gun and fired again. For her, it wasn’t instinctive, but each shot hit millimeters apart from each other. Few soldiers gained such a steady touch. 

They spoke gently as they walked back to the house, Piers cold from the sweat. Claire told him that Terrasave had plenty of resources if he needed them, as he started to figure out what life was like from here. She echoed what Chris had said, that he wouldn’t be some lab rat, at least not while she was around. 

She shot him some finger guns as she reached for the back door; a quick turn, she asked, “Oh, and when exactly did your crush on my brother start?”

Piers tripped up the stairs.

“Before you get mad, Chris didn’t tell me.”

“How? How did you know? I mean, it’s not a crush, or, I don’t think it is. There’s, there's a lot more and it’s complicated,” Piers rambled. “It’s not like that. And we kissed, and I still can’t even figure out if that was a huge mistake. I mean, it had to have been.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to start something. I guess I kind of did, but my brother’s lack of tact is rubbing off on me. I could tell though, you just stared at him the whole night, and honestly, he didn’t do too much to hide that he was doing the same back, well, except when he was embarrassed.”

Piers grimaced, “I don’t know what to do about it, honestly.”

“You don’t have to do anything. Not right now, at least. Just promise me you’ll try and give yourself a little credit.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s something you’re gonna need to figure out yourself. I’ll take it as a promise, though.”

~~~

Christmas was quiet, and dinner was served at 4pm. As they ate, they spoke about how often holiday dinners were served at specific times in their respective families. Piers’s family never ate Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner so late. He joked that the family was in arms if it wasn’t served before two. 

The four swapped small gifts, more ceremonial than anything else. Chris had purchased Piers a new running jacket and a scarf from the general store, a gesture he found quite sweet.  
They watched sappy Christmas movies and ate a pie that Piers haphazardly made. The flavor was there, though it left something to be desired, but the ice cream they ate with it helped to mask some of the finer disappointments.

During part of the afternoon, Piers and Claire played a game of cards while Chris and Jill went out for a walk. When they got back, about an hour later, neither of them spoke much, Jill catching Piers every time he glanced over. After the third time this happened, she left the kitchen and went up to her room. She didn’t come out for the rest of the night but to get a refill or smoke, and while Piers assumed the problem stemmed from the conversation Jill and Chris had, he couldn’t help but feel that his glances didn’t help defuse the situation.

When Claire went to take a nap, Chris took her spot at the table. They started another game, Gin Rummy. 

“Gin,” Piers said as he placed his hand down.

Chris put his hand on the table, shuffled the cards, and started to deal them out again. Another game, and Piers got Gin. When he placed his hand on the table, one of the cards caught fire from a small jolt of bioelectricity. He quickly put it out. 

“Should you check your levels?” Chris asked.

“Probably,” Piers said. “Are you going to stay here?”

“Worried about me?”

“A little, yeah.”

Chris assured him that he’d be fine, that sometimes things weren’t as simple as they’d been between him and Jill, and he wasn’t exactly sure how to reconcile. Piers didn’t push. He went upstairs, gave himself a shot after checking his levels, and decided to take a little nap himself.

Chris lit a fire, and at any given point, one of them was in the living room, but the night was separated. Rarely did people leave their rooms, Chris trapped on the couch, of course. They mostly came to the kitchen to make another drink and then return to their respective places in the house. Piers decided to keep Chris company for a while. So close, so much to say, and yet they still couldn’t figure out exactly where they needed to be.

Around 11pm, Jill went to smoke on the back porch. Piers wasn’t sure where the bravery came from, but he stood up, took his beverage with him, and went out into the cold. Jill stood on the porch, and she didn’t turn when he walked to stand next to her. She just put the cigarette to her mouth and breathed out the smoke. The air was frigid, the snow starting again.

“Can I help you with something?” she finally asked.

“I just thought you could use a little company,” Piers said.

She glanced at him, but she didn’t say anything back. A tap of her finger, and the ash from the tip of the cigarette fell into the snow. Piers felt some sort of connection, sense, or reason from standing next to her, even if she wasn’t doing anything.

“You look like you want to say something to me,” Jill said.

“You frighten me,” Piers responded.

“I tend to have that effect on people. I’ve been told I look like I know too much, which is a fucking sexist way of saying I command a room. Survive events that would kill the most trained people in the world and you get that reputation.”

“I’ve heard some of the stories.”

“What’s your favorite one?”

He hesitated before, “There are too many to count, honestly.”

“I suspect there's the one you’re thinking of more than the others,” she said. Jill took another cigarette from the pack and lit it. “I’m sure you’ve been thinking about it since you first saw me.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Piers bluffed, poorly.

“Auto-defenestration.”

Piers adjusted, embarrassed.

“Was it worth it? That’s what someone asked me once during my rehabilitation. Was it worth it? What kind of fucking question is that,” she said, another drag, the smoke blown slowly, smoothly. “We’re not so different, right? Were you hoping to get something from me? Some great wisdom?”

“I just wanted to stand out in the cold with you.”

She took a swig of the mixed drink she had with her and laughed through her nose. 

“Is it selfish that I want to ask if it gets better?”

“No. That’s not selfish, Piers, but I’m sorry to say, I don’t have much of an answer for you. It’s weird, right? Knowing that you have something swirling around inside you that no one else does. You’re the last one standing, and you don’t really know whether the thing is winning or if you are.”

“We can talk about something else if you want,” Piers said; he’d cornered her, his intentions blatant.

“It’s fine. I don’t mind talking about it,” another gulp, “but if we do, you have to be honest with me, tit-for-tat.”

“Is there something you want to know?”

“Yeah,” she said, “was it worth it?”

Piers stepped away from her, a little appalled.

“I’ve never had the opportunity to ask someone that’s done the same thing as me. Someone that’s died for Chris Redfield. Someone making a choice and seeing the guilt in every movement, every glance, and every joke. Was it worth it to save someone just so they can feel like they’ll never be able to make it up to you? Was it worth it to become dangerous, Piers?” she asked, another drag from her cigarette and swig from the glass.

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because I know two things, vehemently, and much to my chagrin. One is that if I picture it, the night I threw myself out the window to save Chris’s life, and I rotate it; if I move him to where I was, and if I was standing where he was, I know, I know he would do the same for me. The second thing, it depends wholly on the first. Despite the violence, the people I killed and undoubtedly got killed, the violation of my person, I would do it again. I’d hurl myself out that window if it meant my partner, my friend, got to live and do the work he needed to do. And I’m fine with that because I know if it was reversed, and if he was where I was, and if he knew what I knew now, I know with every part of me, he’d do the same,” and she wiped a tear away from her cheek. “So was it worth it? Was it worth dying for Chris? Would you do it again, Piers Nivans?”

Piers wanted to leave, the question almost cruel to ask, and with it came the feeling, the needle in his skin, the viscous fluid inside of it, the fluid that changed his life. Piers relived the pain of the arm sprouting for the first time, the weight pulling his ribs apart, and the haze that obscured the vision in his right eye. Piers could feel it, the memory, the thought that it was what he had to do. The white room, painfully bright, the lights never going out, not sleeping, not really, for months and months. He felt the eternity of never knowing what time it was or how long he’d been there.

Piers could feel his hand on Chris’s chest, the push that sent him into the escape pod. He could remember thinking the last thing someone would ever say to him was ‘No, don’t do this,’ but he already had.

She was waiting for an answer.

“Yes,” Piers said. “I would.”

She nodded along as she snuffed the cigarette on the table, in the snow. It sizzled, and she drew out another one, polished off the glass, and looked at him while she lit the next. “Then as hard as it is, and as much as hurts, always remember that you made a choice, and that choice got you to where you are, and because of that choice, you survived when you wouldn’t have before. You’re different than you ever could have been, but you made that choice, and you stick by it despite everything that tells you to do it over again, and to wish it didn’t happen. Do the most dangerous thing you can do: Live your life, Piers. Adapt. Grow. It’ll never go away, but you can make it better. A loose term, but better all the same.”

“What would you have done if I said no?”

“Then you wouldn’t have been the person I knew could keep up with me. You wouldn’t have been the partner I let look after Chris. I often make poor decisions, but I never make mistakes,” she said with a smile. “My life is defined by what I choose to do with it. Right now, that’s chain smoking and alcoholism because I tried to get back in the field too quickly, but that’s leading me to seek help, something I thought I didn’t need because everyone kept telling me that I was Jill Valentine. Well, even Jill Valentine needs a little help from time to time.”

“Is that why you and Chris are barely speaking?”

Her neck craned, and then she cracked it, like she needed those extra seconds to figure out whether it was worth it. Clearly it was when she said, “Yes. There was a long time when I was so anxious to get back, but it wasn’t where I needed to be. I kept telling myself I was the best damn soldier. That’s who I was. And then the drinking, and then some other things, and then he started telling me how worried he was about me. Him. What a laugh. Worried about me? Did he forget what I did for him?” She shifted her weight. “So we had a little falling out, but it didn’t last long. It felt like guilt, but I finally realized it was someone that was scared for me. I’d spent so much of my life saying I didn’t need to be scared, that even though it pisses me off, he pisses me off, it’s good to know that he’s frightened for me. It makes me frightened for me, too.”

“Can we be friends?” Piers asked after a pause.

“I could use a new friend,” Jill said, flippant, yet sincere. “Sure.”

~~~

Claire and Jill decided to stay into the New Year. The four of them drove through the snow to find fireworks, and on the way back, they stopped at a larger grocery store to get champagne that cost twenty dollars, the finest they could find. They took turns lighting the fireworks over the lake, each of them slipping at least once on the frozen dock, laughing at bruises the morning after, heads still pounding from the sugar in the cheap champagne. They took aspirin, and they cooked frozen pizzas because the idea of making anything else caused the headaches to come back.

Piers could see it vividly, Chris’s face lit up with each pop and crackle of the fireworks overhead, the shadows dancing across the ridge of his nose, his forehead and cheeks. Piers caught him looking, too, and he felt Claire’s words on the back porch catch up with him. All morning he thought about it, at noon, and into the evening. 

Piers crept down the stairs on New Year’s Day. It was late, and the fire was dying out, a light snore escaping from Chris as he turned on his side. Piers looked towards the master bedroom, and he looked to Jill’s room. It was still aside from a sudden pop in the embers.

Piers tapped Chris’s arm, Chris turning over, a little out of it, but raising himself on his elbows when he saw it was Piers.

“I just wanted you to know that I don’t think it was a mistake,” Piers said. “I’m glad I kissed you. I’m glad it happened.”

Chris smiled and said, “You came all the way down here to tell me that?”

“Yeah, and I want to talk about it more, if you want. I think I’m ready to talk about it. There’s still a lot going on, and I’ve still got to try to figure out what to do with so much of me, but I still want to talk about it. I want to start there,” a long pause before, “can we start there?”

Chris leaned over, balancing his weight on his right arm, and with the left, he slowly pulled Piers in for a kiss. Piers could feel Chris’s stubble, the gentle inhale, and the way his fingers felt in Piers’s hair. He liked the breath they let out simultaneously when the kiss ended.

“We should start there,” Chris said. “I want to start there.”

~~~

Alive. That’s what his future looked like: Alive, full, terror, trauma, growth. Days would be insurmountable, but he would ask for help. He promised Chris he would ask for help, no matter what happened. He promised Jill, no matter what happened. He promised Claire, no matter what happened. 

In line at the grocery store, fingers interlaced with Chris’s, burgeoning and learning, the cashier asked how the two of them were doing today. What a question, and where to begin?  
There wasn’t a place to start, so instead he looked at Chris and dug in his heels.

“Swell,” they said together. “We’re doing swell.”

A long way left to go, but swell was a good place to start.


End file.
